Here’s a couple of administrative-type stories that could have a big effect on how we access and use the Net:

• The CRTC ruled against Canada’s independent (i.e., non-telco/cable companies) ISPs’ complaint Bell Canada was engaging in anti-competitive behaviour with its pricing of its high-speed service.
  The Commission did, however, establish strict rules governing how Bell Canada can try to winback customers who have decided to switch to an independent service.
  The result of this could mean Sympatico’s stranglehold on the DSL market just got tighter even as it financially caps the service.
• The Dutch government ruled against Indymedia.nl in a case about linking to banned content — this is a “slippery-slope” ruling that could lead to the end of deep linking.
• The ruling body of the Internet’s addressing system has reversed its original policy and banned us plebes from participating — Salon has a great interview with a longtime Net-head about what this means.

The Gecko-based browsers (Mozilla/Netscape 6+) interepreted line height for images in a way that tended to break pixel-perfect layouts. Now, DOCTYPE snifffing has been changed starting with Mozilla 1.1 beta and three modes are used:

• “quirks” (mimicking older browsers)
• “almost standards” (doesn’t impelement the line-height rule)
• “full standards” (this is the strict mode)